frustrated: encoding for web

overyonder wrote on 12/30/2007, 4:47 PM
After many hours of trying various codecs at various bitrates and settings I have been unable to render a ten second clip from the vegas timeline that looks anything other than total crap when uploaded to the web. I mean, unwatchable as in cell-phone quality video with peoples faces represented as pixelated blobs.

I've followed advice for WMV renders. No luck. Main Concept mp4. Same. Quicktime,Sorensen, etc, etc. I feel like everyone else in the world can upload a halfway decent video to youtube except me.

I'm using Vegas 8, don't feel I should have to buy a third party encoder, not looking for Art here.

I know there are sites like Bliptv,etc, but even those don't look too good.

Any advice for poor, forlorn?

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 12/30/2007, 5:47 PM
What settings have you tried that looked not as totally crappy as other attempts? I've found that 320x240 WMV at 512Kbps looks fairly decent at a small file size. Your clip is short so you could bump it up to 1024 or even 2048Kbps and still have a pretty small file.
overyonder wrote on 12/30/2007, 6:28 PM
Thanks for the reply -
I'm testing a 5 second clip on youtube, It needs to be 1.5MB file size so I can upload a 5 minute video and stay under the 100MB limit.

That sounds like plenty to get the 5 second clip looking good. But, encoded at WMV 320x240, 1.5Mbs cbr 2-pass, it looks terible. I even reduced the color satuaration by 50% . Something is not right. Funny thing is, even when I've encoded too large a file, say, at 3Mbs, I don't really notice a difference once I upload it.

Here's the one I just uploaded at YouTube encoded at 1.5Mbs:


Here's one encoded at 3Mbs:


This one with VBR at 3Mbs


Now, here's one I did months ago with the same camera, WMV, 320x240, a one minute video at 7MB in size, and it looks fine. Maybe because there's so little color/contrast?

BDEye wrote on 12/30/2007, 9:51 PM
Here's a video tutorial on rendering for YouTube using Vegas. It's on YouTube and entitled "TUTORIAL - Make your videos CRYSTAL CLEAR using Sony Vegas."

Jeff_Smith wrote on 12/30/2007, 10:34 PM
Your videos looks similar to alot of other YT vids, maybe a bit dark, thats youtube. Locked down cam with good lighting always helps, I don't see much difference using Vegas mainconcept mp4 320x240 with wmv 512
riredale wrote on 12/30/2007, 11:42 PM
One thing I notice is that the display on YouTube is a lot larger than 320x240; in fact, it's 480x360, over twice the area.
fldave wrote on 12/31/2007, 9:01 AM
For youtube or myspace:

640x480, 1.000 Aspect; WMV 3 MBPS (cranked)

If you go over 3.5 to 4 minutes, then you need to reduce the 3MBPS accordingly to stay under the 100MB file limit.
overyonder wrote on 12/31/2007, 10:05 AM
OK, thanks for the tips.
BUT
this test on youTube is 640x480, 6 MBps, bit-rate VBR. That's huge. That's tons of data. That's 4Mb in a 5 second clip.

And it still looks bad.

It seems no matter how high I encode, it's crap. There must be some reason.
Chienworks wrote on 12/31/2007, 10:08 AM
What's your source? If your source is already highly compressed then another compression step, however light, is gonna look awful.
overyonder wrote on 12/31/2007, 10:12 AM
Chienworks -
the source is simply the .avi from the vegas timeline - captured from my canon mini-dv.
craftech wrote on 12/31/2007, 10:15 AM
Are you sure You Tube isn't recompressing what you upload?

John
overyonder wrote on 12/31/2007, 10:31 AM
Of course they're recompressing what I upload.

the point is, I see plenty of passable videos on youtube that are 3 to 5 minutes in length.

So why is it I can't put my 5 second clip, at a much higher data rate than would be possible if it were 5 minutes in length, on youtube, and have it look at all decent?

You can look at the example-links in my previous post.
nolonemo wrote on 12/31/2007, 11:59 AM
Here's a longish thread, in which one poster claims that video encoded to flash is not re-encoded when uploaded to Youtube.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=504737
overyonder wrote on 12/31/2007, 1:08 PM
Yes, thanks, I read that post a while ago.
While it may be that they don't re-encode flvs, (which I doubt), you still need to buy a flash encoder, which I'm trying not to do.

I did try a trial of On2 flash encoder but had no better success with Youtube upload.
thanks again.

Again - a WMV rendered from vegas 8 timeline:
-640x480
-6291 kbps
-mono audio
-keyframe every 1 second
-square pixel
-30.000 frame rate

The WMV before uploading looks fine.
On youtube - take a look:

nolonemo wrote on 12/31/2007, 1:25 PM
Overyonder, there is a mention of a free Riva encoder somewhere in the thread I posted. The link is still good. I haven't tried to see if flash encoding would work. Everything I have posted to youtube has looked just terrible, BTW, even from pristine footage, so I'm as stumped as you at this point.
fldave wrote on 12/31/2007, 3:17 PM
I think my wmv settings use CBR, not VBR. Not sure if that is the difference?

And it is not universal, some re-encoded mpg stuff doesn't make the trip up to youtube well, doesn't hold up.

But most of my HDV to 640x480 holds up very well.